Back to the ghetto

by Joakim Philipson

So they are back in full swing again, those of our clan who want to lock us all up in the ghetto again. It takes so little to slam the door in the face of the world and put the cross-bar in it's place again. First send up an arab-eating politician to the Temple mount, one of the holiest sites of the Islamic world, a place which until recently no Jew was supposed to enter according to religious Jewish law, and certainly not a man responsible for mass murder, bearing in mind that King David, as a man of war, was not even allowed to lay the founding corner-stone of the First Temple. Then, once the scene has been set and the target has been chosen, all you need is to kill some stone-throwing or not so stone-throwing children in front of the TV-cameras, and bang goes the gate, there you have it, we're back in the ghetto again. After all, those are only arab lives, and they come really cheap, you can get them almost for nothing these days.
And then we can just sit there, locked up safely in our self-built cellblock, watching our own belly-buttons and feeling sorry for ourselves, complaining that nobody loves us.

Well, what's wrong with spending some time with your own family, one might ask. Of course, there is nothing wrong with that, as long as it is out of your own free will, and not as a result of a life-sentence. Sooner or later you just have to grow up and leave home, even if you intend to come back later. That is part of the meaning with growing up. If you are not allowed to leave, you can never come back. Return. Yes, we are in the middle of the season for teshuvah , when we are supposed to return to G-d, and to ourselves to scrutinize our doings during the year that has passed, and make repentance:

"And you will return and listen to the voice of the Lord, and you will do all His commandments which I command you this day" (Deut. 30:8)

"If you listen to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep his commandments and His statutes which are written in this book of the law; if you will return to the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul" (Deut. 30:10) - then what? It is interesting to note that the Torah states already in the preceding verse what will happen, if we return:

"And the Lord your God will make you pre-eminent in every work of your hand, in the fruit of your body, and in the fruit of your land, for good; for the Lord will again rejoice over you for good, as He rejoiced over your fathers" (Deut. 30:9)

So we are in a kind of strange loop here. Return one step, and you will se what happens. ... The only problem is, that in real life we most often cannot undo what has been done. A child that was shot to death cannot be returned to life again. Returning to G-d and to ourselves, therefore, ought to mean something more than mere contemplation of our actions. It should mean also to start taking the word of G-d about loving the stranger seriously. It should mean that we at least try to stop doing things that we will have to regret, but which cannot be undone, things that make us abominable in the eyes of G-d and humankind, and that will leave us lonely in our hearts and in our souls, confined to ourselves in our prisoncell.

Just recently, before Ariel Sharon first entered the Haram al Sharif, there was talk about a new drive in Israel to make Jews also from western countries, from Europe and the United States, make aliya, to move to Israel to settle there permanently. Well, I am sorry, but this is not the way to do it. As it is right now, Israel is definitely not the place to go for claustrophobiacs or for people afraid of suffocating. It may well be that Ariel Sharons only lasting impact on the Jewish diaspora, G-d forbid, will be that of the initiator of a massive assimilation campaign.

Joakim Philipson
Mo i Rana, 5 October 2000 - 7 Tishri 5761

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